Burn the Darkest Night
by tatterdemalion
Summary: Sometimes she is horrified by the vicious urge she gets to strike her brother - family should never hurt each other. A story of Ukraine's occupation during WWII.


**Title:** Burn the Darkest Night (Part One)

**Author:** tatterdemalion

**Characters:** Ukraine, Belarus, Russia...more will appear in later parts

**Rating:** T for now, just to be safe

**Summary:** _Sometimes she is horrified by the vicious urge she gets to strike her brother - family should never hurt each other._ A story of Ukraine's occupation during WWII.

**Author's Note: **I took a book out from the university library that I thought was very interesting. The title is _Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine _by Wendy Lower. Prior to this my knowledge of Ukraine under Nazi occupation was limited - Ukraine has always been one of my favourite Hetalia characters and I felt like I should try to write this.

Also because **Twilight Rose2** promised to write a little something something ;) ;) OK yeah I'm lame let's go

* * *

Ukraine remembers, with sickening vividness, the "old days", which in her mind are blurred like some fantastical silent movie and are almost always better than the present. Not that things were peachy keen back then, but at least Ukraine has _memories_.

She remembers singing her national anthem and feeling the swell in her breast as her people echo her - "_Ще не вмерла Українa, ні слава, ні воля_," they sing, and she thinks, _No, it has not as long as you are still willing to fight for me_.

She remembers better times. She remembers Nataliya coming over on chilly mornings to eat breakfast with her sister - dear Nataliya, so angelic but with such a sharpness lurking beneath the surface, scarf wrapped round her head and tucked under her little pointed chin to ward off the cold, coaxing Ukraine from her bed with promises of stories and hot, bitter coffee with freshly peeled _antonovkas_.

She remembers Ivan sitting on her porch, too big for her rocking chair but she will not say anything because he tries so _hard_, the dear, squeezing his lower torso onto the spindly old thing until she cannot keep her laughter inside of her - then Ivan looks at her with an expression that is so quizzical and so _Ivan_ that it makes her laugh harder and kiss the poor boy's brow.

She remembers serving lemon tea to her siblings on cold nights, remembers laughing as Nataliya drapes herself over Ivan and her brother's large palms in the weak firelight dealing cards, and she thinks _I love you my beautiful family._

Now it is 1940 and Ukraine is sitting across from her brother, legs crossed at the ankles, sweating under her petticoats, lips pressed so tightly together they have gone white. She is still gaunt from 1933 - her blouse hangs off her shoulders and under it her ribcage juts out sharply, angrily. She has cut her hair short for work in the fields, and her calloused hands are clasped and pressing painfully into her thighs. At the desk is her baby brother, her _Vanya_ her Russia, her _superior_ and how has it come to this, Ukraine wonders?

Ivan is not looking at her, is instead sorting through papers with large hands that are deceitfully gentle-looking.

She does not know who this man is anymore, this man who embraced her in 1917 and told her he'd protect her, this man who watched her starve and said, "_Maybe you should be looking at your farming instead of blaming me, big sister_?"

"What are you doing, Vanya?" she asks quietly, and Ivan looks up, face a calm, cheery mask. She cannot look him in the eyes, not after '33.

"Paperwork." he tells her patronizingly.

"What are you doing with Germany?" she rephrases, slowly, carefully, aware of the look in her brother's eyes when he carved up Poland, like a hunter trying to take the sweetest meat for himself.

"Why do you ask?" he shoots back, and now he has put down his pen (_not good, not a good sign_) and is _looking_ at her, really looking at her and she can't look away now.

Those eyes are cold and sharp and Ukraine instantly deflects her glance and feels a hot rush of shame.

"I'm worried," she admits, and how can she _not_ be worried when her own brother has helped take Poland, has stood by while Hungary invaded Carpatho-Ukraine, while Czechoslovakia fell. She has _seen_ the Pact he and Germany have signed, a butcher's agreement, a separation of territories under them both, like card players dealing out the spoils.

"It is not your place to worry." Ivan hums. "All is going according to plan."

Ukraine shifts nervously, all courage gone, and Ivan smiles sweetly at her. "Didn't you bring your embroidery with you, big sister? Belarus is out in the hallway - perhaps you should go say hello?"

He has dismissed her, like she is nothing. Ukraine nods, stands, picks up the bag that holds her knitting and her thread and her needles, and leaves Ivan's office. Her boots click against the floor.

Nataliya is sitting primly on a rickety wooden chair just outside the office door. She stands so that the sisters can embrace and kiss. Nataliya's lips are cold against Ukraine's cheek. Ukraine sits with her and takes out her embroidery.

Ukraine embroiders now, as well as knits. When she started her designs were chunky and loose - now she bends over her work and makes the stitches neat and perfect. If she does not do something with her hands nowadays, she is left to pick at scabs on her knuckles until the wounds open and she gouges bits of skin from her hands. She does this to ignore the stirring bitterness in her bones, of her people's resentment of Soviet rule. Sometimes she is horrified by the vicious urge she gets to strike her brother - family should never hurt each other.

_What is he doing to_ **you**, _then_? a little voice inside her asks. Ukraine ignores it.

"_Natalka_," she says softly, and searches her sister's eyes when she turns. Ukraine hesitates, before asking, "Are you scared?"

Nataliya's eyes have a faraway look to them. Her gaze shifts to a spot over Ukraine's right shoulder. "I am not scared." she says, with certainty. "Because Big Brother will protect us."

Ukraine must have looked disappointed, because Nataliya turns on her with sudden determination, eyebrows furrowed, pretty little mouth pursed. "You should trust him as well, Big Sister." she says. "You do, don't you?"

_Oh Natalka_, Ukraine thinks miserably. _How utterly loyal you are. Can't you see what he's doing?_

"It is not Brother I don't trust," she answers carefully, mindful of the almost-fanatical devotion that hangs around Nataliya of late. "It's Germany."

Nataliya's shoulders tense a little, and she swivels her body so she is sitting back in her chair, spine curved. "All we can do is trust Brother knows what he is doing." Nataliya mutters, as if to herself, adding, "And he _does_."

_You don't believe that, Natalka, do you? _Ukraine thinks.

She thinks Nataliya does. And that is what frightens her more.

* * *

The world is at war and Ukraine is spending more and more time sneaking into St. Andrew's Church, which Ivan says she cannot go into but she does anyways.

No one has held services here since 1932. A thin layer of dust covers the iconostasis. Ukraine climbs up, into the cupola - she thinks it is because she wants to be closer to God. She cannot hear him anymore.

She kneels in the darkness and prays for her brother and her sister and for herself, for being so faithless as to not _believe_ her brother when he says that everything is fine. She prays for her people, to give them the strength to go on. She even prays for Germany, who appears on the edge of her vision - of _everyone's_ vision - like a bird of prey. Waiting, watching, but always advancing.

"O angel of God, my holy guardian, given to me from heaven, enlighten me this day, and save me from all evil," she murmurs in the stillness. Her voice is muffled in the space and hovers over her head. It feels like she could reach up and take the words back if she wanted. "Instruct me in doing good deeds, and set me on the path of salvation."

Ivan will never take this away from her.

"O angel of Christ, holy guardian and protector of my soul and body, forgive me everything wherein I have offended you every day of my life."

She thinks she hears footsteps below her.

"Protect me from all influence and temptation of the Evil One. May I never again anger God by my sins. Pray for me to the Lord, that He may make me worthy of the grace of the All-Holy Trinity, and of the blessed Mother of God, and of all the saints."

She doesn't care.

"_Amen_."

* * *

Looking back, Ukraine finds it funny that the one clear thing she remembers is that Belarus was hit the hardest, initially. It is not fair, she thinks, because out of the both of them Nataliya had more faith. _Ukraine_ was the bad sister - _Ukraine_ should have been the first to crumble. Instead, in 1941 she and her sister hurry down the streets of Minsk and Nataliya is limping. Rivulets of blood make a macabre pattern down her stockings. Ukraine had just stopped by for the weekend, to drop off papers from Ivan and see her sister, and now the Germans have advanced: Nataliya's eyes are just as determined as ever but her pace is slow and painful. Ukraine wishes she had the strength from her childhood so that she could scoop her sister into her arms, like old times.

But she can't anymore, so all she can do is offer her arm. Eventually Nataliya (_Nataliya_, who never wants her siblings to see her as weak) grabs it, digs her fingernails into the fabric of Ukraine's coat, and holds her as she stumbles along.

"...back to Kiev." she hears Nataliya mutter and when she asks her to repeat it her baby sister straightens up and stops them in the middle of a crowded street. People hurry past them - soldiers push through in their lines. "Go back to Kiev." her little sister repeats. "Your people need you. _Vanya_ needs you."

"_Natalka_..." Ukraine grabs Nataliya's elbow as the long haired girl sways, uncertainly, on her feet. Ukraine doesn't know which direction the Germans are coming from and she wants to know so she can at least stop the bleeding! Nataliya lets go of her arm - Ukraine wonders if under her coat she can see the crescent marks she left.

"_Katya_." Nataliya has not called her that in years. "I can take care of myself. If you do not go now I will be very angry and I will not invite you over next time I make _draniki_."

It is then that Kateryna Chernenko - utterly herself, Ukraine, borderland - realizes that her sister has lost faith. She realizes that Ivan cannot protect them from everything. She realizes that whatever she was clinging onto - memories, loving faces, a sense of _Ukraine_ - is coming to an end. And she realizes she is crying now, clutching her sister's shoulders and kissing her face and telling her how sorry she is that she couldn't protect her.

Finally Nataliya tears from her grip, snarls, "Be quiet, you silly old thing!" with suspiciously wet eyes, and sends her on her way.

Kateryna runs through the city, away from her sister, and she feels it is the most cowardly thing she has ever done in her life.

* * *

**Notes:**

"_Burn the Darkest Night_" - the title is inspired and adapted from a quote by Vasilii Grossman, which appears in the introduction of _Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine_. The full quote is as follows:

"People arriving from Kiev say that the Germans have placed a cordon of troops around the huge grave in Babi Yar where the bodies of 50 000 Jews slaughtered in Kiev at the end of September 1941 are buried. They are feverishly digging up corpses and burning them. Are they so mad as to hope thus to hide their evil traces that have been branded forever by the tears and blood of Ukraine, branded so that it will burn brightly on the darkest night?"

_Ще не вмерла Українa, ні слава, ні воля _- the opening line of Ukraine's national anthem, which translates to "Ukraine's freedom has not yet perished, nor has her glory". This was the anthem of The Ukrainian People's Republic which lasted until 1920, when the song was banned by the Soviet regime.

_antonovka_ - an apple with a strong acid flavor, used throughout Russia, Belarus, and the Russian Empire because they are hardy and survive the toughest winter. In Belorussian cuisine they are usually used in pies.

-between 1932 and 1933 there was a famine in Soviet Ukraine. Estimations of the death toll range as high as 10 million and as low as 2.2 million. There are several theories as to WHY the famine actually happened - Stalin was implementing radical economic changes through the Soviet regime, and requisition quotas for farmers was extremely high (collective farms were expected to return around 132, 750 tons of grain). On the other hand, there are theories that the famine was forced in order to silence Ukrainian nationalism. Whatever the case, it was the worst man-made famine ever seen in the history of the Ukraine.

-"..._the Pact he and Germany have both signed_..." - the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which Hitler and Stalin agreed to divide Europe between themselves. It was decided that the USSR would get Finland, Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland, Moldavia, and a bit of north-eastern Romania. Germany would get Lithuania and western Poland

_Natalka_ - the Ukrainian diminutive of Nataliya

St. Andrew's Church - a major church in Kiev, one of four architectural landmarks in Ukraine. The Soviet Council closed it down in 1932 - it was reopened during the war for regular services. It's a beautiful place, as Baroque churches tend to be - the iconostasis Ukraine mentions was designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli. Many Ukrainians, though they had been forbidden to practice their religion during Soviet rule, still continued to secretly carry on the Orthodox faith.

-my Mama is Greek-Orthodox but I am Roman Catholic...so I don't know much about the religious procedures D: But you get a protection prayer anyways!

-Germany's attempted invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, lasting four years, was called Operation Barbarossa. The Battle of Białystok–Minsk occurred before the Battle of Kiev which is why I wrote Nataliya feeling the effects before Kateryna. It is interesting to note that a fortress in western Belarus was hit very heavily in the beginnings of the war and it was thought the Germans would break through their defenses in several days - actually, it took several weeks. Nataliya just wouldn't stand for their shit.

_draniki_ - Belorussian potato cakes

-Instead of Katyusha I call Ukraine Kateryna - it also works with my head canon that during Soviet influence Ivan called her Yekaterina in order to "Russify" her. "Katya" is the diminutive form. For some reason I like the siblings calling each other by their diminutives. I gave Ukraine a separate surname from her brother because Nataliya has a separate surname as well; plus the fact that the siblings in Hetalia canon do not share surnames, as far as I know. Also, I like the fact that now the first letter of the trio's surnames spell **ABC** - "**A**rlovskya" "**B**raginski" "**C**hernenko". Yes that does make me lame.

Thank you very much for reading!


End file.
